Thus, as has ever been the case when the “Common People” have been goaded by insult into a furious state of temper, some leader has aptly sprung, like Cromwell, from their ranks, and carried them triumphantly to victory. In the same way George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Grover Cleveland have each in turn led the hosts of the “Common People” to victory in their battles against “divine rights,” injustice, “caste,” and “sham aristocracy.”
England, by the execution of Charles I., was without a king. The authority was vested in the House of Commons (diminished by Pride’s Purge the expulsion of the Presbyterian minister) contemptuously styled “the Rump.” Cromwell, the man of the “Common People,” and his terrible army, composed of the “Common People,” were the actual rulers. In Ireland and Scotland the Prince of Wales was proclaimed as Charles II., whereupon the grim Ironsides—those representatives of the people, and their terrific earnestness when aroused—conquered Ireland as it never was conquered before. Crossing then to Scotland, the covenanters were routed at Dunbar, and again at Worcester.
Cromwell, while he had the power of a king, like Cæsar, dared not take the title. He recognized, what it would be well for the sham aristocrats to attentively regard, that the people MAKE and UNMAKE; hence, he did not dare offend the “Common People” by assuming the title of king, though exercising all the powers of a king. Under Cromwell, England’s glory became greater than under Elizabeth. The Barbarian pirates were punished; Jamaica was captured; Dunkirk was received from France in return for help against Spain; protecting the Protestants everywhere, Cromwell compelled the Duke of Savoy to cease persecuting the Baudois. The very name of England became terrible to the oppressor of the poor in every land. The people, in their might, were ruling England; because, even though Cromwell was styled “Lord Protector of the Commonwealth,” he still understood that his greatest power rested upon the will of the “Common People” as a foundation.
Upon the death of Oliver Cromwell there was no hand strong enough to seize the helm of the ship of State. His son Richard, who did not inherit the genius of his father, and did not hold the confidence of the “Common People” of England, was quickly put aside. And the English people—the “Common People”—casting about for an executive to place at the head of the nation, selected Charles II., whom they called to England to rule them, but not “by divine right;” simply as their king.
The popularity of Charles II., the most profligate, the most licentious and immoral ruler that Great Britain has ever had, arose because he was the people’s king. They had called him from over the sea; he ruled by no divine right, but through the affections of the people. He was to them their king, and though he sinned, erred, and wasted the money of the nation, he was of the people, and they forgave him. When James II. attempted to revive (as the people feared he would, and hated him in consequence, even before his succeeding Charles II.) “the divine right of kings,” and the privilege of doing anything, the idea that nothing that he did could be wrong, the people resented it. It was not Catholicism. Dear as religion may be in the heart of man, there is one thought that is dearer: it is his right to be a man, and equal to any other. Had James II. been a people’s man, as was Charles, his brother, it is quite possible that the House of Stuart might now reign in Great Britain. William of Orange was beloved by the people, because he was so thoroughly a people’s man, that even the proud Anglo-Saxons preferred to submit themselves to his rule, joined with a daughter of the House of Stuart, rather than to the legitimate successor of Charles II. The mighty voice of the people was heard resounding in the selection of the Prince of Orange with the same notes that marked the music of the march of a triumphant Democracy, on November 8, 1892; like the grains of wheat taken from the tombs of the Pharaohs, though gathered in a harvest of fifty centuries ago, when planted will produce the same crop as to-day.
History repeats itself continually, and nowhere more obvious is the repetition than in the record of the Anglo-Saxon race. The same causes which occasioned the unpopularity of Charles I., the popularity of Cromwell, the popularity of Charles II., were working to create Cleveland’s tremendous popularity and the overthrow of the Republican party November 8, 1892.
CHAPTER XVI. THE GERMAN EMPIRE, 1520-1525.
Germany does not present a fruitful field for examples of popular uprisings and the exhibition of the indignation of the people when crushed by the oppressors of the upper classes. Germany to-day, even in the last decade of the nineteenth century, presents a picture of the only government in Europe which pretends to have a representative form of government, where the chief executive, the Emperor, can speak of himself, or would dare to do so, as the “war lord,” to whom absolute obedience is due by the citizens of the Empire. The Anglo-Saxons, while a branch of the great Teutonic race, seem to have acquired, by their being transplanted to the British Isles, a greater spirit of independence than the other branches of the German race that have remained on the continent of Europe.